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EBEN HARRELL Key points Key quote Story in full GEORGE Galloway could be facing a lengthy prison sentence in the United States after a Senate committee last night claimed it had fresh evidence his political organisation and his wife had received nearly £340,000 in oil-for-food allocations from Saddam Hussein and then lied under oath about the deal. The committee said it had the "smoking gun" that proved the anti-war activist received UN allocations from Saddam, a charge the Respect Party MP vehemently denied under oath in May. Senator Norm Coleman, the chairman of an investigative subcommittee, said he will send the evidence to US Department of Justice and to British authorities. Mr Galloway could now face charges in America of perjury, making false statements and obstructing a congressional proceeding. Each charge carries a penalty of up to five years in prison and a £140,000 fine. Mr Coleman said he had obtained evidence that Mr Galloway's political organisation and his wife received the money from illegal oil allocations. "We have what we call the smoking gun," the senator said of the findings in the 60-page report. "Galloway was anything but straight with the committee; he was anything but straight with the American people. You heard a lot of bombast." A spokesman for Mr Galloway, Ron McKay, said the anti-war activist denied the accusations and, if charged with perjury, would be willing to appear in an American court. "Put up or shut up," Mr McKay said of Mr Galloway's accusers, calling the report derogatory and defamatory. Earlier, Mr Galloway released a statement saying that although he had not seen the report, which he called "a sneak revenge attack of the most contemptible kind," he continued to defend himself against allegations of impropriety. "I have not made a penny out of oil deals with Iraq or indeed any other kind of deal," Mr Galloway said. "This ought to be dead, yet Norm Coleman parrots it once more, from 3,000 miles away and protected by privilege." During a May hearing, Mr Galloway blasted Mr Coleman's subcommittee as "the mother of all smoke screens," denying accusations that he profited from the oil-for-food programme and accusing lawmakers of unfairly tarnishing his name. Mr Coleman, a harsh critic of the United Nations, said his panel's evidence shows that Mr Galloway personally solicited and was granted oil allocations totalling 23 million barrels from 1999 through 2003. Those allocations could be sold for a profit. The report also alleges that Mr Galloway's friend, Jordanian businessman Fawaz Zureikat, funnelled money from the oil-for-food programme to Mr Galloway's wife, Amineh Abu-Zayyad, and to the Mariam Appeal, a political organisation that Mr Galloway established in 1998. Coleman said his investigators confirmed their evidence, which includes numerous bank records, in interviews with the former Iraqi deputy prime minister Tariq Aziz, a friend of Mr Galloway's. |
